DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

An in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor is call­ing for ur­gent Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion as protests by hun­dreds of nurs­es in­ten­si­fy, warn­ing that de­lays in re­solv­ing the dis­pute could deep­en strain on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic health sys­tem.

Court­ney Mc­Nish spoke out yes­ter­day, urg­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion to pri­ori­tise a set­tle­ment with nurs­es who have raised con­cerns over over­time pay­ments, staffing short­ages and work­ing con­di­tions. He cau­tioned that the sit­u­a­tion, if left un­re­solved, could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for health­care de­liv­ery.

His com­ments came a day af­ter nurs­es staged a silent protest at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (NCRHA) ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope.

The demon­stra­tion fol­lows a de­ci­sion by the NCRHA to re­duce over­time rates from $75 an hour to $60. Of­fi­cials said the move was prompt­ed by what were de­scribed as “ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties,” in­clud­ing cas­es where nurs­es logged be­tween 200 and 400 hours in full over­time, at a re­port­ed an­nu­al cost of $36 mil­lion.

But Mc­Nish said the dis­pute points to deep­er, long­stand­ing chal­lenges with­in the pub­lic health sec­tor.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, he said many nurs­es re­main on 2013 salary lev­els de­spite the es­sen­tial role they con­tin­ue to play in the sys­tem.

Amid ques­tions over whether the Cuban med­ical pro­gramme could help ease staffing pres­sures, he cau­tioned that such arrange­ments would not pro­vide an im­me­di­ate fix.

“That will take some time to work out. The Cubans here, that’s noth­ing new. But if those arrange­ments have ex­pired, the Cubans have gone back, then it’ll take some time to rein­tro­duce. To me, the op­tion is let’s set­tle the nurs­es’ is­sue.”

In­stead, he said, the Gov­ern­ment should fo­cus on ad­dress­ing the con­cerns raised by lo­cal health­care work­ers as a mat­ter of ur­gency.

“Solve the prob­lem. That is what I be­lieve any good ad­min­is­tra­tion will do. The nurs­es are re­al­ly be­hind and I think the Gov­ern­ment should take all steps pos­si­ble to try to solve this mat­ter as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Be­cause the con­se­quences can be dire,” he said.

“And I don’t think the nurs­es are be­ing to­tal­ly un­rea­son­able. They are pre­pared to ac­cept what oth­er pub­lic ser­vants got. So, if that is fixed and fixed quick­ly then I think nor­mal­cy will re­turn.”

Fel­low In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis said the protest re­flects a fa­mil­iar pat­tern in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.

“But, of course, one is con­cerned. But the rea­son we have process­es is so that we could come to a rea­son­able ac­com­mo­da­tion, work­ing it out,” Lewis said.

The Gov­ern­ment has yet to re­spond pub­licly to the protest or to con­cerns raised by nurs­es, de­spite re­peat­ed at­tempts to ob­tain com­ments from the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ters of Labour and Health.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 new nurs­es have been hired at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex to ease staffing pres­sures linked to the on­go­ing protests.

Op­po­si­tion fig­ures have al­so weighed in on the dis­pute, fram­ing it as part of a wider pat­tern of un­met com­mit­ments by the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu said the sit­u­a­tion re­flects grow­ing frus­tra­tion among pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

“This is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of promis­es made and promis­es not kept.”

In a state­ment is­sued on Tues­day night, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s si­lence as the is­sue drags on, call­ing for di­rect en­gage­ment with health­care work­ers and a clear plan to ad­dress the cri­sis.

“The Prime Min­is­ter seems to be­lieve that hid­ing her head in the sand and adopt­ing a dis­mis­sive at­ti­tude will make the health­care dis­as­ter her Gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed dis­ap­pear.

“This ap­proach is baf­fling, as she should know bet­ter than to dis­miss, dis­re­spect, and push health­care work­ers to their lim­its,” said Beck­les.